SkyDrive gets a Windows 8 look-and-feel, Android app coming soon

Also, more than 10 million people are using the Windows 8-inspired Outlook.com.

After giving its free e-mail service a new Windows 8-inspired coat of paint with Outlook.com—which has seen more than 10 million users sign up already—Microsoft has turned its attention to cloud storage service SkyDrive. Over the next 24 hours, the company is rolling out a new "modern" interface for SkyDrive's online component.

While Outlook.com didn't add many new features—behind the scenes, it's pretty much identical to Hotmail—SkyDrive has picked up a bunch of new capabilities in addition to its new appearance. In the Web front-end itself, SkyDrive is now searchable, including the ability to search for text within Office documents. File handling has been streamlined, giving users the ability to select multiple files and drag and drop them to move them between folders. Sorting is also smarter; there are new ordering options and a facility to save sort options on a per-folder basis.

SkyDrive's apps are being enhanced as well. Over the next week, Microsoft is rolling out an update to the Windows and Mac OS X SkyDrive clients. The new version will be faster at uploading files to the cloud and will use less processor time when checking your system for changed files.

There are also some improvements for developers using the SkyDrive API. Applications can now upload files of any type and photos of any size to the cloud service. Microsoft has added a JavaScript-based file picker to make it easy for Web applications to save and open files from SkyDrive.

Looking into the future, Microsoft promised to include a selective synchronization feature to SkyDrive, and in a few weeks, the company will be releasing a SkyDrive application for Android.

Also on the "modern" front Intellipoint/Intellitype have been merged into a new app called Microsoft mouse and keyboard center. The new UI is actually pretty decent & it's not as slow as as the old ones were.

Mesh stuff is built into Skydrive -- download the Skydrive app and it will sync multiple PCs to your Skydrive folder.

Mesh has no such limitation - if you want to sync 200GB between multiple machines, then you can, with no need to pay for 200GB of cloud space.I also need a replacement - Sugar Sync could be the way to go...

EDIT : Nope, Sugar Sync still doesn't support none-cloud syncing. The feature-request asking for this on their forum has now been open for two years !

Mesh stuff is built into Skydrive -- download the Skydrive app and it will sync multiple PCs to your Skydrive folder.

Mesh has no such limitation - if you want to sync 200GB between multiple machines, then you can, with no need to pay for 200GB of cloud space.I also need a replacement - Sugar Sync could be the way to go...

Furthermore, Mesh permits syncing of individual folders, very nice for keeping two PC's identical. Like a desktop and a laptop, for instance.

Mesh stuff is built into Skydrive -- download the Skydrive app and it will sync multiple PCs to your Skydrive folder.

Mesh has no such limitation - if you want to sync 200GB between multiple machines, then you can, with no need to pay for 200GB of cloud space.I also need a replacement - Sugar Sync could be the way to go...

Furthermore, Mesh permits syncing of individual folders, very nice for keeping two PC's identical. Like a desktop and a laptop, for instance.

Any solutions out there?

SyncToy still works if you don't need WAN sync, though it's not an automatic background process. Runs can be scheduled, however, using Windows Task Scheduler.

I can give you a Cubby invite if you wish. Just gotta post in the thread with your preferred e-mail address.

I have 5 invites for Cubby as well if anyone wants LAN syncing. I actually prefer it to Mesh as it works very well with OS X and Windows. Mesh gave me problems on OS X.

LAN or WAN? For my gf, the issue is she has a laptop and a desktop, the desktop is at her office, laptop is with her. She needs the ability to go to her desktop and be in sync with everything she's done on her laptop in near real time, which is what Mesh did. If Cubby is LAN only, its not much of a help, but if it works over the internet, its ideal.